We Imperial Valley residents were not given time to discuss the Salton Sea water deal
Seems like most people are falling all over themselves celebrating the “historic” deal between the Imperial Irrigation District, Coachella Valley Water District, the U.S. Department of Interior (Bureau of Reclamation), and the California Natural Resources Agency that will supposedly bring up to a quarter-billion dollars to the Salton Sea for restoration projects.
I certainly understand the need to conserve water and help bolster the elevation at Lake Mead to try to restore some kind of balance to the Colorado River, but at what cost to the people of the Imperial Valley?
The Imperial Valley is giving up 1 million acre-feet of water over four years for maybe $250 million and that just doesn’t seem like an even trade off; it feels like a bad deal—like my friends over at Comite Civico del Valle so aptly put it—“half-baked.”
Like I said on Tuesday afternoon, Nov. 29, at the special IID board meeting, when I got to lodge my protest with a deal that seemed to be rammed through with less than 24 hours’ notice, “I’m here not shooting from the hip but shooting from the heart,” that is, I didn’t have a lot of time to soak it in.
Well, I’ve had a moment to process it, and I’ve come away with a number of issues, one of the biggest being the lack of access, advance notice and the general absence of sunlight this whole decision was given. I’m not a lawyer, and the fact that this four-way deal straddles federal, state and local jurisdictions complicates things, but this whole ordeal was announced for the first time in the news media about 24 hours before it got voted on in a special meeting of the IID.
Where’s the public review period for something this monumental, something that hasn’t had the potential to affect people in the Imperial Valley on such a level since the Quantification Settlement Agreement in 2003, where massive amounts of water were transferred out of Imperial County, fields lay fallow for years, and the shrinking of the Salton Sea quickened?
This new deal, too, will send less water to the Salton Sea. The $250 million is to go to restoration projects, and yes, it is supposedly just a start with more to come. But we wonder whether enough funding can come fast enough to offset 1 million acre-feet of losses and the cumulative damage on the environment from more exposed playa and fugitive dust of the mostly poor Latinos who make up the communities along the shores of the sea. It’s there where we see so many problems with respiratory illnesses. Will we see even more? It’s a fair question to ask.
The QSA got the best of us, and none of us in this tight-knit community of social justice and environmental justice advocates are going to go quietly. If anything, we learned from the last time and saw the mistakes play out. Like the common refrain: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
The Salton Sea already has funding assigned to it, and this deal was nothing more than the issuing of blood money needed to clear consciences and quiet the complaints in order to perpetuate the next big water heist. It’s a sad turn of events, and it was done right in front of us with enough sleight of hand to make it legal, that is, skirt any Brown Act violations apparently.
John Hernandez is a Brawley resident and executive director of Our Roots Multicultural Center. His email is jlhernan1@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: We Imperial Valley residents were overlooked in Salton Sea water deal
